


A Different Life

by celeste9



Series: February Challenge Fics [22]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Awkward Conversations, M/M, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Pre-Relationship, doppleganger
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-23
Updated: 2018-02-23
Packaged: 2019-03-22 20:26:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13771893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celeste9/pseuds/celeste9
Summary: On a scouting mission, Finn has an unexpected encounter with Kylo Ren, who doesn't behave at all like the Kylo Ren Finn remembers. Finn considers every explanation from elaborate manipulation to amnesia, but the truth might be even weirder than that.





	A Different Life

**Author's Note:**

> Day 22: dopplegangers

Finn glanced back up from the readings on his datapad. The planet would be serviceable, he thought; the temperature ran low but nothing unmanageable, not even as cold as Starkiller, and the air quality would be acceptable for most lifeforms. He was about to pull out his comlink to contact Poe when he saw an unexpected but familiar appearing from behind a rock formation.

“Kylo!” Finn said, and pulled his blaster.

Kylo held his hands up. “Hey! Please don’t shoot!”

_ Don’t shoot?  _ Finn fired; Kylo swore and ducked out of the way before igniting his lightsaber and deflecting the blaster bolts. His lightsaber was green; that was odd.

With a wave of Kylo’s hand, Finn lost his blaster. “Blast,” he muttered.

As Finn’s mind raced with his options, Kylo disengaged his lightsaber and said, “Do you always pull blasters on passing strangers?”

“Only the ones who have tried to murder me and my friends.”

“You have a strange definition of attempted murder, then. Pretty sure I was just walking.”

“Don’t play dumb, Kylo.”

Kylo’s forehead creased. “Kylo? I think you’re mixing me up with someone else. My name is Ben.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard. I also heard you like to say Ben Solo is dead.”

“I’m sorry, who are you again?”

Wow. Finn knew Kylo was a dick, but he was really a  _ dick.  _ Finn pulled up the back of his shirt to show off his scar. “Does that refresh your memory?”

“No?”

“You like to call me traitor, and Phasma went with FN-2187. Mostly I prefer Finn.”

“Okay, Finn, you’ve really got me confused with someone else. Honestly I’m just trying to figure out where the hell I am because I’m pretty sure it’s not the same place I woke up in this morning. What planet is this?”

“Did you hit your head? Is this some sort of amnesia thing? Or do you honestly think this game will fool me?” Finn looked more closely at Kylo’s face. “I guess you had your scar fixed. Worried it wrecked your features?”

Kylo ran a hand through his thick hair. “I’ve never had a scar, at least not on my face. This is getting tiring; I’m clearly not who you think I am. Just tell me what planet I’m on so I can get off it and find my uncle.”

“Your uncle? Your uncle is dead!”

Kylo blinked. “Luke Skywalker? You’re mistaken.”

“I’m not. He’s been dead for months, and it’s mostly because of you.” 

“My uncle is…” Kylo stepped forward, the edge of his dark cloak brushing the ground. He had changed his outfit; he looked more like the padawans and Jedi Finn had seen in old holos than Kylo Ren. “My uncle is fine; he’s on Kashyyyk, or at least, that’s where I left him. I need to find him so I can figure out what the hell is going on.”

Kylo was starting to look visibly distressed; Finn had seen him angry and emotional before but not quite like this. “Luke Skywalker died on Ahch-To after kicking your ass without even laying a finger on you.”

“Stop lying to me! Who are you? What game are you playing?”

“What game am I playing? What are you trying to prove with this ‘I’m not Kylo Ren’ shit? I was in the fucking First Order! I know who you are!”

“The First Order? That Imperial offshoot my mother can’t get the Senate to agree to declare war on?”

“Kriffing hell,” Finn said, pinching his palms. “Like you didn’t declare yourself Supreme Leader after you murdered Snoke. Which, okay, good on that, anyway. Minus the taking over part.”

Kylo stepped closer; Finn made himself hold his ground. “All I want is my uncle. Failing that, my mother will do, or even my fucking father at this point.”

“This is obscene. Your uncle is dead and you ran your father through yourself.”

“My father is--” Kylo swallowed. “My father is on Kashyyyk, too. He’s spending time with Uncle Chewie and my Wookiee cousins while Uncle Luke and I are mediating a dispute. He’s… irritating, but he is definitely alive. I would never--”

Okay, Finn thought. Kylo could lie about anything. He could. He could manipulate. He had learned from Snoke, hadn’t he? He would do anything to get what he wanted. Finn couldn’t begin to guess what it was he was trying to get, but Kylo was certainly not above lying to get it.

But everything about him was… off. He seemed genuinely disturbed and confused by what Finn was telling him, and Rey had said… His face, he had been scarred, and it had been so long, for his skin to look so fresh and unmarred now, Finn wasn’t sure it was possible. His clothes could be changed, a new lightsaber built, but he seemed honestly out of his depth and Finn was starting to wonder if Kylo could actually be this strong an actor.

Maybe he really had hit his head.

“I watched you kill him,” Finn said, and Kylo flinched.

“I wouldn’t do that! I’ve thought about it, sure, but I…” Kylo took a breath, gaze darting to the side before settling on Finn again. “What have I ever done to you that you would hate me so much, that you would say these things to me?”

“What have you ever done to me? I showed you what you did to me! You nearly killed me, and you attacked my friends, and you’ve killed innocent beings, and that’s not even mentioning what you’ve done to the Resistance, or how you treated Rey. You tortured Poe!”

“Poe? Poe Dameron?”

“Yeah, Poe Dameron! Fuck you, Kylo. I’ll tell you where you are, you’re ten minutes from the ship that’s gonna cart you back to our base where we can lock you up.”

“I can use this,” Kylo said, brandishing his lightsaber hilt, “and I can do this.” He held up his hand to push Finn’s blaster farther from him. “But I have never hurt anyone I didn’t have to and I’ve definitely never tortured anyone, certainly not Poe. Unless he holds me accountable still for wrecking his toy models, which, I don’t know, maybe he does, but I was five.”

“I… Okay,” Finn said, because he was frankly at a total loss. He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to make of a Kylo Ren who didn’t seem to remember that he was Kylo Ren, or of the idea that Poe and Kylo had apparently been acquainted as children.

“Okay,” Finn said again. “So tell me what you think is going on.”

“I’ve told you, I have no kriffing idea! I was on Kashyyyk with my uncle, that’s basically what I do, outside my research, I help him, when he’s mediating or with his students. But I… I don’t know, something strange happened, it was like I fell asleep and woke up somewhere completely different. There is so much still that we don’t understand about the Force, and I’d really like to speak with my uncle so I can figure out what this was.”

“Your uncle is--”

“Don’t tell me he’s dead!” Kylo shouted, hands in fists by his sides, and there he was. Kylo Ren. In that moment Finn recognized him utterly, that pure emotional rage.

But then it faded. Kylo took a breath, and then another, and his eyes looked lost and bewildered.

“He can’t be,” Kylo said more softly, and Finn came to the uncomfortable realization that Kylo truly cared.

It was a hell of an elaborate lie, if it was a lie, and to be honest, Finn wasn’t sure Kylo had either the discipline or the emotional control to pull something like this off. Kylo as Finn had known him was unpredictable and prone to outbursts of temper and fury. This seemed beyond him.

And Finn was beginning to believe in his genuine familial attachment, an emotional connection to his uncle that lacked the complication Finn had glimpsed on Crait and that Rey had spoken of.

“So,” he said. “Amnesia wouldn’t explain your different memories, or your face. Time travel? From, like, an alternate reality? Is that a thing? You know more about the Force than I do.”

Kylo gritted his teeth. “If you won’t take me to my uncle, do you know my mother?”

“I’d love to take you straight to your mother,” Finn said, because that really suited him fine, whether Kylo was lying or not.

He turned at the sound of a blaster, watching Poe stride toward them, firing. Kylo lifted his hand and froze the blasts long enough to move out of the way.  

“Finn, come over by me,” Poe commanded.

Before Finn could say anything, Kylo waved his hand and Poe’s blaster went flying. Poe dove for it but Kylo sighed and tossed it farther away.

“Is this about your toys, Dameron?” Kylo asked, and Finn almost wanted to laugh.

He kind of liked this strange Kylo, who said he came from Kashyyyk and that his name was Ben.

“My what?” Poe said. “Finn, what the hell is going on? Has he hurt you? Where did he come from? I scanned the planet, there was nothing--”

“He attacked me, for the record,” Kylo said. “Have you got a ship?”

“Uh, yeah, obviously.”

“Suppose you’re still calling yourself the best pilot in the galaxy. Do you have room for a third on your ship? I’d like to talk to my mother.”

“It’s that way,” Finn said, pointing.

Poe stared at Kylo as he marched off and then looked at Finn.

Finn shrugged. “It’s complicated, okay?”

-

Finn did his best to explain to Poe on the flight, and then Poe transmitted a message to base so they could be prepared. He wasn’t surprised when they disembarked to be faced with a crowd, ground troops and General Organa and in front of them all, Rey, her double-bladed lightsaber in front of her.

“It’s impossible,” she said. “It can’t be him. I’ve just seen him, halfway across the galaxy from where you picked him up. I arrived back only just before you did, and his face…”

Kylo’s gaze slid over Rey with no recognition, only to alight on General Organa. He moved, met with the threat of Rey’s lightsaber. Kylo rolled his eyes. “Oh, please, girl. If I wanted to hurt you I would’ve done it already. Mom, please, tell me what the kriff is happening here.”

The general’s lips were parted faintly and she was holding her hand in front of her chest. “Ben,” she said, and then more firmly, “everyone leave us; I’d like a conversation with my son.”

“General,” Poe protested, but Leia raised her hand and he fell silent.

The crowd parted as Kylo walked forward to meet his mother, towering over her, and then the two of them went side-by-side off the tarmac, disappearing inside the base.

“What the hell,” Rey said, and Finn couldn’t give her an answer.

-

General Organa and Kylo talked for a long time, while the base buzzed with gossip. When they finally came out, the general was pale and Kylo looked like he might have been crying.

No one was to bother Kylo. He wasn’t Kylo Ren; he was Ben Solo, here through some strange twist of the Force, a different reality to his own. General Organa believed that, and no one in the Resistance was prepared to argue with her.

At least, not yet. Finn wondered if that would remain the case. Even if he wasn’t Kylo Ren, that didn’t make the general’s wild explanation true. It could still be a trick of the First Order, or of Kylo himself; a ploy to gain information or subvert them from the inside or who the hell knew what.

But Finn… Finn looked at Kylo, apparently fresh off a bought of tears, and he remembered their earlier conversation.

It was ridiculous and crazy but Finn thought he believed it.

He sat next to Kylo just outside the base, on a green hill. Kylo glanced over at him and Finn said, “I know what it’s like to be the guy no one really knows what to do with. If you need anything, you can ask me.”

“Why would you help me? Looks like I really am the terrible person you said I was.”

“I don’t know,” Finn said, shrugging. “I guess it depends on if you think you’re responsible for what another version of yourself has done.”

“It’s what I would do. In a different life.”

“Yeah, but that’s the point, isn’t it? You chose to be someone else. So I think that makes you better.”

Kylo eyed him askance. “That’s charitable of you.”

“I guess I feel like… it’s not fair to be considered someone you aren’t. This Kylo Ren is a kriffing asshole, absolutely. But you’re not him, so maybe we should leave off our judgment until we know you.”

“And what do you… think you’ll think? When you know me.”

His ears were pinking. It was dorky and weirdly endearing and Finn was almost charmed. “Guess we’ll find out,” Finn said, giving into his smile, and liking the way Kylo – Ben – smiled back.

Finn thought he might enjoy getting to know this Ben Solo.


End file.
